Times/Things Change

Many, many years ago, I used to watch a variety of country music programs on television with my parents. Every Saturday night were those old syndicated programs, from the Grand Ole Opry to the Porter Wagoner Show.

One song that used to be done repeatedly was a mournful song entitled "Rank Strangers"...and as I recall, it was about a person who went back home after many, many years and visited old familiar haunts only to find out just how much things had changed and how all his friends had become "rank strangers" to him.

I never could understand that song....and how that could be. It used to bother me and make me quite upset.


Now, I understand.

On this trip home, I've had the opportunity of visiting some of my old familiar haunts....places that I had not visited in years. Things had changed. REALLY CHANGED.

Over forty years ago, I would spend occasional weekends with my baby sitter at her elderly relative's home. Yesteday, I drove out there with my mother. The bridge that was at the end of their street had been replaced. The street itself was not as I had reembered it. I had a difficult time even identifying the house. But there it was! Much smaller than I had remembered. The house color had changed. And the house was for sale!

Gosh, I wonder how much it was being sold for.

I fantasized and wondered, what it would be like to move back here and to live in that house.

My high school has long closed. My elementary school was torn down years ago. The place where my dad's barbershop was is vacant and the building will be torn down in a few weeks.

I even drove out the road to where the Marshall University Airplane crash site was. Due to the movie, "We Are Marshall," they've erected a memorial overlook to the site with a plaque. This site once was located on a busy highway. Sadly after 37 years, the highway has been rerouted, and the memorial now stands on a dead end. The site of the crash is now covered in woods and trees and underbrush. It was once a clearing with some trailer homes dotting the landscape. No more!

It's odd visiting "home" now.

So much has changed, including me.